Glen Powell kind of proved revelatory to me in Hit Man. Not just a pretty face and a casual, sly grin… I’ve been mentally stuck on his Top Gun: Maverick personality but this flick scrubs that impression clean. The guy’s a good actor. And I’ve seen Adria Arjona in other movies too, but I’ve never really seen her until now. Together they were sexy magic.

Hit Man is a film that exists in the real world where people believe hit men exist because the movies have told them so. In walks Glenn Powell’s character, a nerdy school teacher who helps the cops by pretending to be a hit man in order to catch people trying to hire one. Including a beautiful woman who seems more trapped than vengeful.

I really dug this “real world” angle where hit men don’t exist but everyone thinks they do. And given how much work the could get if they did exist, it feels like a potential growth industry. Powell and the cops have a lot of work on their hands busting (perhaps too many) people trying to hire a killer. This angle of the film is fun even if it runs its course with a few too many mug shots.

But it’s really the cockeyed rom-com the film turns into that’s the real star of the show. Powell and Arjona were absolutely a cool, sexy couple and the film gives us plenty of opportunities to stare at them and their bedroom eyes (and bodies). They develop such a flirty fun relationship that the rest of the movie could have been about anything and I’d have been along for the ride.

There’s especially a great scene between them having one conversation while having a second one via cell phone text and eye contact I was having so much fun with their double layers of back and forth that I wished it could have gone on longer. The two actors kill it playing this two layer game, their faces and body language saying one thing, their mouths another.

I enjoyed so much of this movie I’m a little annoyed to say it gets a bit laggy in its center. I teeter on a final score but I’m going higher due to the sheer star power of the leads (and fondness for Linklatter as a writer/director).

Score: 85